Greatly underrated game. Should not be marked below an 8 and if you do you haven't a clue about space strategy games.
Although I've given the difficulty a just right, it is quite hard to fathom out at first and there is a learning curve. But thanks to the video and text tutorials you'll be up to the task in no time.
One thing I will say is it's highly addictive and DON'T, I repeat, DON'T start a game unless you have a lot of time to kill. Hours will pass by like minutes and days may fly by. Depending on the size of the map you choose and players to compete against, the minimal of all will consume quite a lot of hours play.
The game consists of two parts. First is the strategy, planet colonization and empire building via planet management, researching new technologies, trading and making alliances. Upon arriving at planets they need to be colonized. This will mean landing a colony ship which will start to terraform the planet. Depending on the planet's atmosphere, it could take some time, but this can be sped up by researching the necessary technologies. Once you have colonized a certain number of planets you will have the option (once you've developed trade) to set up trade routes, but these can only be set up within sectors that are secure and free from enemy activity. This can greatly increase you cash inflow which once you start to play will realise this vital to your survival.
Upon developing new technologies, with a rather unique research tree, you can then start designing your ships weapon, engines and shields. All will become vital if you are to survive against the four other alien races.
The second is space battles against incoming attacking fleets or attacking prospective planets to colonize. This is the real time strategy and sees you pitted against the enemy fleets. You can also change how long you want battles to last in the game setup. The default is 4 mins and my only negative is that once a battle's started you can't finish unless you hyperspace out which is normally after about 2mins. Depending on the number of ships as well as specified battle time, battles could take some time. In the design element of the game you can also break up the weapons array into 3 groups for more strategic use. This will become more important when you start playing with the cruiser and dreadnought class of ships once you've researched their technology. Planets can (and will) be defended by defense turrets and in order for an enemy to take your planet/or you take theirs, you have to bombard it until you drop the population rate to 0 as shown in the top left of the battle screen.
At the start of the battles you'll only have a small number of ships to control which if one is destroyed another will hyperspace in depending on the number of ships. However upon research you can create command ships that allow you to create fleets thus allowing more ships on screen at one time.
Overall, when I first started playing it, I was a bit overwhelmed. However once you start playing, even on single player, making alliances, having to go and protect ally's planets etc is an incredibly enjoyable experience.
The game in my opinion is truly a brilliant game and if you enjoy space strategy with combat then this is for you.
I would rate this game higher than Galactic Civilizations 1&2, themselves great games. The graphics and user interface are far superior. The single player games are more enjoyable (and certainly more winnable) than GC2's pathetically impossible campaign. I liked this game far more.
Trust me, once you've played a couple of games and got the hang of things you'll be coming back time and time again. That's a promise. This is an intelligent strategy game for strategy game lovers.
Lastly, I'm simply flabbergasted by those who can mark this under an 8. Anyone can see that a lot of work has gone into this type of game and more importantly shows above all that you are not a strategy/space building fan or even aficionado. Simply this game is not for you and therefore you shouldn't have touched it with a bargepole. All you have done is dropped the user score which should be very high, right down because of your ignorance of such games. This means that the programmers, designers, animators etc don't get the credit they rightfully deserve, in making games for people to enjoy. I mean, how anyone could rate this a 1.8 is beyond me. Stick to SF4 as strategy games are well beyond your sphere of gaming.